Thirst (3 page)

is where
    in the pinewoods
        in the moments between
            the darkness

and first light
    two deer
        came walking down the hill
            and when they saw me

they said to each other, okay,
    this one is okay,
        let’s see who she is
            and why she is sitting

on the ground, like that,
    so quiet, as if
        asleep, or in a dream,
            but, anyway, harmless;

and so they came
    on their slender legs
        and gazed upon me
            not unlike the way

I go out to the dunes and look
    and look and look
        into the faces of the flowers;
            and then one of them leaned forward

and nuzzled my hand, and what can my life
    bring to me that could exceed
        that brief moment?
            For twenty years

I have gone every day to the same woods,
    not waiting, exactly, just lingering.
        Such gifts, bestowed,
            can’t be repeated.

If you want to talk about this
    come to visit. I live in the house
        near the corner, which I have named
            
Gratitude.

It doesn’t have to be
the blue iris, it could be
weeds in a vacant lot, or a few
small stones; just
pay attention, then patch

a few words together and don’t try
to make them elaborate, this isn’t
a contest but the doorway

into thanks, and a silence in which
another voice may speak.

Everything is His.
The door, the door jamb.
The wood stacked near the door.
The leaves blown upon the path
    that leads to the door.
The trees that are dropping their leaves
    the wind that is tripping them this way and that way,
the clouds that are high above them,
the stars that are sleeping now beyond the clouds

and, simply said, all the rest.

When I open the door I am so sure so sure
    all this will be there, and it is.
I look around.
I fill my arms with the firewood.
I turn and enter His house, and close His door.

In the morning of his days he is in the afternoon of his life.
It’s some news about kidneys, those bean-shaped necessities,
    of which, of his given two, he has one working, and
        that not well.

We named him for the poet, who died young, in the blue
    waters off Italy.
Maybe we should have named him William, since Wordsworth
    almost never died.

We must laugh a little at this rich and unequal world,
    so they say, so they say.
And let them keep saying it.

Percy and I are going out now, to the beach, to join
    his friends—
the afghan, the lab, the beautiful basset.
And let me go with good cheer in his company.
For though he is young he is beloved,
    he is all but famous as he runs
across the shining beach, that faces the sea.

The flowers
    I wanted to bring to you,
        wild and wet
            from the pale dunes

and still smelling
    of the summer night,
        and still holding a moment or two
            of the night cricket’s

humble prayer,
    would have been
        so handsome
            in your hands—

so happy—I dare to say it—
    in your hands—
        yet your smile
            would have been nowhere

and maybe you would have tossed them
    onto the ground,
        or maybe, for tenderness,
            you would have taken them

into your house
    and given them water
        and put them in a dark corner
            out of reach.

In matters of love
    of this kind
        there are things we long to do
            but must not do.

I would not want to see
    your smile diminished.
        And the flowers, anyway,
            are happy just where they are,

on the pale dunes,
    above the cricket’s humble nest,
        under the blue sky
            that loves us all.

You have broken my heart.
    Just as well. Now
        I am learning to rise
            above all that, learning

the thin life, waking up
    simply to praise
        everything in this world that is
            strong and beautiful

always—the trees, the rocks,
    the fields, the news
        from heaven, the laughter
            that comes back

all the same. Just as well. Time
    to read books, rake the lawn
        in peace, sweep the floor, scour
            the faces of the pans,

anything. And I have been so
    diligent it is almost
        over, I am growing myself
            as strong as rock, as a tree

which, if I put my arms around it, does not
    lean away. It is a
        wonderful life. Comfortable.
            I read the papers. Maybe

I will go on a cruise, maybe I will
    cross the entire ocean, more than once.
        Whatever you think, I have scarcely
            thought of you. Whatever you imagine,

it never really happened. Only a few
    evenings of nonsense.
Whatever you believe—
        
dear one, dear one—
            
do not believe this letter.

On the outskirts of Jerusalem
the donkey waited.
Not especially brave, or filled with understanding,
he stood and waited.

How horses, turned out into the meadow,
    
leap with delight!
How doves, released from their cages,
    
clatter away, splashed with sunlight!

But the donkey, tied to a tree as usual, waited.
Then he let himself be led away.
Then he let the stranger mount.

Never had he seen such crowds!
And I wonder if he at all imagined what was to happen.
Still, he was what he had always been: small, dark, obedient.

I hope, finally, he felt brave.
I hope, finally, he loved the man who rode so lightly upon him,
as he lifted one dusty hoof and stepped, as he had to, forward.

The grass never sleeps.
Or the roses.
Nor does the lily have a secret eye that shuts until morning.

Jesus said, wait with me. But the disciples slept.

The cricket has such splendid fringe on its feet,
and it sings, have you noticed, with its whole body,
and heaven knows if it ever sleeps.

Jesus said, wait with me. And maybe the stars did, maybe
the wind wound itself into a silver tree, and didn’t move,
    maybe
the lake far away, where once he walked as on a
    blue pavement,
lay still and waited, wild awake.

Oh the dear bodies, slumped and eye-shut, that could not
keep that vigil, how they must have wept,
so utterly human, knowing this too
must be a part of the story.

There are days
when the sun goes down
like a fist,
though of course

if you see anything
in the heavens
in this way
you had better get

your eyes checked
or, better still,
your diminished spirit.
The heavens

have no fist,
or wouldn’t they have been
shaking it
for a thousand years now,

and even
longer than that,
at the dull, brutish
ways of mankind—

heaven’s own
creation?
Instead: such patience!
Such willingness

to let us continue!
To hear,
little by little,
the voices—

only, so far, in
pockets of the world—
suggesting
the possibilities

of peace?
Keep looking.
Behold, how the fist opens
with invitation.

In the city called Wait,
also known as the airport,
you might think about your life—
there is not much else to do.
For one thing,
there is too much luggage,
and you’re truly lugging it—
you and, it seems, everyone.

What is it, that you need so badly?
Think about this.

Earlier, in another city,
you’re on the tarmac, a lost hour.
You’re going to miss your connection, and you know it,
    and you do.
You’re headed for five hours of nothing.
And how long can you think about your own life?

What I did, to save myself,
was to look for children, the very young ones
who couldn’t even know where they were going, or why.
Some of them were fussing, of course.
Many of them were beautifully Hispanic.

The storm was still busy outside, and snow falling
    anywhere, any time, is a wonder.
But even more wonderful, and maybe the only thing
    to put your own life in proportion,
were the babies, the little ones, hot and tired,
    but still
gurgling, chuckling, as they looked—
wherever they were going, or not yet going,
in their weary parents’ arms (no!
    their lucky parents’ arms)—
upon this broken world.

Don’t flowers put on their
    prettiness each spring and
        go to it with
            everything they’ve got? Who

would criticize the bed of
    yellow tulips or the blue
        hyacinths?
            So put a

bracelet on your
    ankle with a
        bell on it and make a
            little music for

the earth beneath your foot, or
    wear a hat with hot-colored
        ribbons for the
            pleasure of the

leaves and the clouds, or at least
    a ring with a gleaming
        stone for your finger; yesterday
            I watched a mother choose

exquisite ear-ornaments for someone
    beloved, in the spring
        of her life; they were
            for her for sure, but also it seemed

a promise, a love-message, a commitment
    to all girls, and boys too, so
        beautiful and hopeful in this hard world
            and young.

(In my sleep I dreamed this poem)

Someone I loved once gave me
a box full of darkness.             

It took me years to understand
that this, too, was a gift.          

That time
I thought I could not
go any closer to grief
without dying

I went closer,
and I did not die.
Surely God
had His hand in this,

as well as friends.
Still, I was bent,
and my laughter,
as the poet said,

was nowhere to be found.
Then said my friend Daniel
(brave even among lions),
“It’s not the weight you carry

but how you carry it—
books, bricks, grief—
it’s all in the way
you embrace it, balance it, carry it

when you cannot, and would not,
put it down.”
So I went practicing.
Have you noticed?

Have you heard
the laughter
that comes, now and again,
out of my startled mouth?

How I linger
to admire, admire, admire
the things of this world
that are kind, and maybe

also troubled—
roses in the wind,
the sea geese on the steep waves,
a love
to which there is no reply?

1.

All day up and down the shore the
    fine points of the waves keep on
tapping whatever is there: scatter of broken
    clams, empty jingles, old
oyster shells thick and castellated that held
    once the pale jewel of their bodies, such sweet

tongue and juice. And who do you
    think you are sauntering along
five feet up in the air, the ocean a blue fire
    around your ankles, the sun
on your face on your shoulders its golden mouth whispering
    (so it seems)
you! you! you!

2.

Now the afternoon wind
    all frill and no apparent purpose
takes her cloud-shaped
    hand and touches every one of the
waves so that rapidly
    they stir the wings of the eiders they blur

the boats on their moorings; not even the rocks
    black and blunt interrupt the waves on their
way to the shore and one last swimmer (is it you?) rides
    their salty infoldings and outfoldings until,
peaked, their blue sides heaving, they pause; and God
    whistles them back; and you glide safely to shore.

3.

One morning
    a hundred pink and cylindrical
squid lay beached their lacy faces,
    their gnarls of dimples and ropy tentacles
limp and powerless; as I watched
    the big gulls went down upon

this sweetest trash rolling
    like the arms of babies through the
swash—in a feathered dash,
    a calligraphy of delight the beaks fell
grabbing and snapping; then was left only the
    empty beach, the birds floating back over the waves.

4.

How many mysteries have you seen in your
    lifetime? How many nets pulled
full over the boat’s side, each silver body
    ready or not falling into
submission? How many roses in early summer
    uncurling above the pale sands then

falling back in unfathomable
    willingness? And what can you say? Glory
to the rose and the leaf, to the seed, to the
    silver fish. Glory to time and the wild fields,
and to joy. And to grief’s shock and torpor, its near swoon.

5.

So it is not hard to understand
    where God’s body is, it is
everywhere and everything; shore and the vast
    fields of water, the accidental and the intended
over here, over there. And I bow down
    participate and attentive

it is so dense and apparent. And all the same I am still
    unsatisfied. Standing
here, now, I am thinking
    not of His thick wrists and His blue
shoulders but, still, of Him. Where, do you suppose, is His
    pale and wonderful mind?

6.

I would be good—oh, I would be upright and good.
    To what purpose? To be shining not
sinful, not wringing out of the hours
    petulance, heaviness, ashes.
To what purpose?
Hope of heaven?
Not that. But to enter
    the other kingdom: grace, and imagination,

and the multiple sympathies: to be as a leaf, a rose,
    a dolphin, a wave rising
slowly then briskly out of the darkness to touch
    the limpid air, to be God’s mind’s
servant, loving with the body’s sweet mouth—its kisses, its words—
    everything.

7.

I know a man of such
    mildness and kindness it is trying to
change my life. He does not
    preach, teach, but simply is. It is
astonishing, for he is Christ’s ambassador
    truly, by rule and act. But, more,

he is kind with the sort of kindness that shines
    out, but is resolute, not fooled. He has
eaten the dark hours and could also, I think,
    soldier for God, riding out
under the storm clouds, against the world’s pride and unkindness
    with both unassailable sweetness, and consoling word.

8.

Every morning I want to kneel down on the golden
    cloth of the sand and say
some kind of musical thanks for
    the world that is happening again—another day—
from the shawl of wind coming out of the
    west to the firm green

flesh of the melon lately sliced open and
    eaten, its chill and ample body
flavored with mercy. I want
    to be worthy of—what? Glory? Yes, unimaginable glory.
O Lord of melons, of mercy, though I am
    not ready, nor worthy, I am climbing toward you.